This week’s gospel readings have been showing different manifestations of faith: faith in the promise of salvation; faith that heals and even conquers death; the lack of faith from among the people in Jesus’ hometown; and today, on faith journey.
The global financial crisis has thrown some of us into the widening morass of anxiety and helplessness. The sense of losing our grip amidst the deluge of issues on unemployment, corruption, bankruptcy, hunger and homelessness has left some of us bereft of hope for a better future. What we cannot calculate, what we cannot fathom, what we cannot control easily unnerve us.
Perhaps the readings for this week have been designed as such so as to that we will be reminded the quintessential elements of faith trust and dependence, of letting go and letting God while urging us to continue His saving mission just like when He summoned the twelve apostles. His missionary work of anointing the sick and driving out demons which he bequeathed to the disciples and to us comes with a promise that by not taking additional provisions for our journey we are to expect that He would constantly watch over us and would provide for all our needs. He also reminded us to travel in pairs so as to avoid isolation that breeds spiritual pride and that a shared faith journey is far more enriching because of the reciprocity of talents and gifts between two persons.
In short, our faith journey requires more of unpacking than packing … “of emptying our self of everything that distracts us from God” as Henri Nouwen puts it, since in anything and everything that we are faced with, God alone is and will always suffice.
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